Page 213 of Eldritch
The bones around the room began to sway from their skinny ropes, clattering as they hit one another.
One of the birds swooped down from its perch and slammed itself into the wall. It stumbled around on the ground, then managed a few flaps of its wings, enough to lift its body into the air, and flew straight for the wall again. Over and over, it rammed itself, headfirst, blood splashing where it bashed its beak and skull.
Horrorstruck, I so desperately wanted to help the poor creature, but it flew again and, that time, didn’t get up from where it’d fallen.
“What is going on?” My voice echoed the distress pulsing through me.
The priestess lifted the bird’s dead carcass and shook the blood over Aleysia, chanting more words. She then knelt at Aleysia’s side, and my heart hammered in my chest as I watched her pour the vial of motley fluids into my sister’s mouth.
Aleysia’s body jerked, and her eyes shot open, revealing black orbs as she lay convulsing and gagging.
“Aleysia!” I sprang toward her, but the two Lyverian men stepped in front of me. “Move, or I will turn you to dust!”
Neither seemed concerned, but remained there, both staring back at me.
“You will not lay one finger on them,” the priestess said casually, pushing to her feet. The men stepped aside, as she backed away until standing alongside me.
“What did you do to her?” I couldn’t take my eyes off my sister, my muscles shaking as I watched her eyes roll back in her head. Blood leaked out of the corners of her mouth and trickled out of her nose.
“Your blood. Our blood. It carries the ichor of the goddess.”
Aleysia’s eyes snapped shut, and her body stilled once more.
“Death cleanses.”
The walls seemed to narrow, and my chest tightened. “You killed her?”
“If Morsana has no use for her, she will return her.”
The thread holding me together stretched thin and tight. Tighter.
Snap.
I spun toward the woman beside me and grabbed hold of her throat before I even knew what I was doing. “I’ll kill you!” The rage inside of me hooked itself into my muscles and bones, so deeply, it didn’t even register that Father and two Lyverian men were prying me off the woman, not until one of them took hold of my hair. Even once we were separated, I swiped out at her, wanting to gouge her eyes out of her sockets.
A strange clicking sound filtered in through the haze of red that clouded my eyes.
The men released me, and I turned to see something black emerge from Aleysia’s mouth. A leg. And another. The body of a spider scampered past her lips, across the floor.
“Oh, god!” The incessant thump of my heart pounded in my ear over the sound of that clicking, and I watched as two more spiders crept out of her mouth.
The ravens overhead swooped down, plucking them off the floor.
Consumedthem.
More poured out of her mouth, and more ravens joined the others, eating the spiders before they could scamper away.
Until, at last, no more came forth and the birds returned to their perch.
Aleysia’s pale body didn’t move. Eyes closed, she looked as if she might have peacefully slept, except that her chest didn’t rise and fall with breath. “She’s dead.”
“Yes. A god does not wish to reside in a corpse.”
“She’s my sister!”
The priestess stepped in front of me. “And you will wait to see what Morsana decides for her!”
“Maevyth?” a weak voice called out, and I looked past the woman standing in my way, to see Aleysia sitting upright, looking around.
